Day 211-212

Past couple days I masked the parts for the final coat of paint on the outside.

Not a whole lot to mention, enjoy the pictures!

warm.

special foam tape to seal the gaps and hopefully not leave a hard edge.

foam tape.

I didn't good coverage the first time I tried to paint these...

reclaimed step stool for getting the roof.

Day 209 - 210

Much progress to report!

I have started painting the car and it has turned out very well.  Happy with most of the results although my technique could always use improvement ;)

I started getting the bumpers in the special rust preventative paint on the back sides.  The claim to fame is it won't rust beyond the scratch and since the bumpers were originally painted from the factory and I won't be able to wax the backsides this was a good process!

This shows the hammer marks on the BACK side of the bumper used to get the front side looking real pretty.

Day 1 of painting the car went pretty well.  I started off with the small parts, undersides of the fenders, hood, and decklid.  For the most part it turned out okay, I had a couple runs and dry spots.  Just getting my technique back I guess.  Luckily it's all on parts that won't be seen.

The final color in the sun.

Today, I was able to get the inside and underside done.  Minimal runs, good coverage, very happy with the results.

Fender well, minimal orange peel, happy with the results.

I did get another quart of paint and hardener to finish up my 1.3gals of clear.  I was originally thinking 1 gal of paint would be ok, but it looks like I may need more and don't want to stress about not having enough paint come the end of the project.

I need to now reverse mask all the areas I just painted and hopefully get the last part done soon!  Hang the fenders, hood, and decklid and shoot!

Day 207 - 208

The past couple days I've focused on getting the doors hung and unfortunately, the pins did not fix the sag.  It's an old car and I'm going to have to live with it.

The body is off the pan currently too, so it is near impossible to align the doors until everything is bolted down.

Anyway, the driver's side is all good and I had to make two 18ga steel shims for the bottom passenger side as it wanted to rub on the heater channel.

I am literally ready to paint.  Now to find the time, weather, and courage!

Day 206

12hrs in the garage yesterday...for four door pins!

A long day for sure but I had quite the task.  I had to remove my donor hinges from the banged up doors, drilling out the rivets, repairing some slight tool markings with my welder, grinding them down, media blasting them, reaming, painting, and then install.  I had to remove the bad hinge from my passenger door which also took a while as I wanted to be very careful.

This tool helped big time removing some of the stubborn pins!

Stress crack on the driver's door.  Just welded this area up and grinded down.  Good for another 58 years of use!

I got 3 of the 4 pins in and still had the driver's top side to go.  This requires a special pin that supports the rear view mirror.  So, using some ingenuity I took the good threads from my bad pin and welded them to the top of the new pin.  Turned out pretty good.  I ended up having to weld the threads on 3 times before they finally worked.  Every time I went to pound the pin in the weld cracked.  A hassle but well worth it in the end.

Ultimately, there is still some slop in the pins but I did the best I could with what I had.  It's an old car and no one expects it to be absolutely perfect.  Right. ;)

In other news, I also got the bumpers back from the chromers and they look great!

Weather has been great recently.  Looking to get the doors mounted again, clean the booth and shoot some paint!  I also have to paint the backside of the bumpers with the same paint I used on the pan to prevent them from rusting since it's hard to get a good coat of wax on them.

Moving along...

Day 202-205

Well, it has been a whirl wind of progress the last few weeks.

Here are some updates.

Everything is taped ready to be painted.

Until I mounted the doors and saw they were sagging.  I got the repair tool, replacement pins for the hinges and attempted that today.  Two of the hinge pins came out fine, but the first oversize I bought is still too small.  Another $70 and the 2nd oversize should take care of them.

The bottom right hinge, completely messed up the hinge itself.  So I need to replace the hinge.  When removing the pin the bottom expanded making the hinge pin hole much larger than I could ream.  The only solution is to replace the hinge.  And as you can imagine, those are hard to find...

On a happier note, two days ago I visited with the vinyl manufacturer in Portland and they are color matching my original door panel and recreating the vinyl exactly for the seat covers.  Looking forward to what they come up with.  I'm still searching for the headliner, we'll see how it turns out.

And today, in my anticipation that the door hinge pin progress would go well (it didn't) I went out and bought paint.  There is great weather the next few days and I thought I'd take advantage, not going to happen this time.

In the middle of mixing my order they ran out of the one toner I needed.  So they mixed the rest of it and then had me run over to a local car dealer and "borrow" they rest of the toner.  Another step in the process but happy to have the paint mixed and ready to go.

Poor lighting, not sprayed on the car, and not with any clear on it...but that is L243 Diamond Grey!

Trying to figure out the doors situation, but other than that I am literally ready to paint.

Day 201

The bug is pretty much ready for final paint.  I got the random parts and pieces masked and ready to go.

Today I put the booth plastic back up.  Took a lot longer than I had hoped.  But it's done!

Tomorrow hopefully get the car masked off.

Slowly but surely.

Day 196-200

Very long time since an update.  Quite a bit has been happening, so here's the latest.

I was able to find a reproduction emergency brake boot that is a much better match.  I also found an NOS shifter boot.  They came from Germany and England, respectively.  Happy to have found them and at least I learned all about how to paint rubber  :)

I purchased a period correct Blaupunkt radio.  I sent it off to a repair guy that comes highly recommend, located in St. Augustine, Florida.  It is a US spec radio so it has radio stations all the way up to 108 mHz on FM which was very rare for radios of this time.  It's also date stamped so it was manufactured the same year as my car.  Very cool.

I sent the bumpers out to get chromed.  This is a large expense but will be well worth it because they are stamped VW!

I stripped the paint booth of all the plastic and have given the garage a thorough blow out.  I am going to do a nice scrub right before final paint.

I also wiped down the entire body today with wax and grease remover.  Most of the block sanding was done but there were a few minor areas where you could still see sanding scratches after I removed the dust.  I took care of them and got it ready for a wipe down and paint!

Today I also worked on my door panels.  Previously, I had bought a staple gun and got the correct length staples so they wouldn't puncture the material.

I have an entire replacement vinyl for this rip.

The other side is in ok shape.

My panels were in okay shape.  The color has faded which I will dye but the mounting boards are pretty much toast.  So I removed the vinyl and cleaned them today.  They cleaned up pretty good.  I used Simple Green and a heavy duty degreaser.

Top, original.  Bottom, cleaned.

I found the original style mounting board and had it delivered.  My goal today was to get my panels flat.  They are curved from many years in the humidity of Florida and probably getting wet a couple times.

I used the hose to get them wet again and then compressed them under a heavy jack.  I've done it on the back ones so far and they seem to be laying flat again.  The front ones are the real killers, I'll try those tomorrow.

I've also been trying to source the right vinyl.  I've found two suppliers that have the exact texture but the color is still alluding me.  The greens and greys aren't right.  I think I'm going to have to just settle on something that is close.

Option A is the right texture and close.

The samples are B, C, and the green Naugahyde brand (wrong texture)

So, still some decisions to be made on the interior.  I have the headliner all picked out, waiting on the rest to order.

Large expenditures coming up.

Chrome $1500
Interior seats $1500
Headliner $400
Paint $2500?

I am pretty much ready to paint.  I'm waiting for a good weather window and a break in the schedule.  I'm hoping within the next month.  We'll see...